Friday, August 24, 2007

CULTURAL RELATIVISM, UNDIFFERENTIATED MEDIOCRITY AND TYRANNY

Contemporary Western society is tumbling further and further into the abyss of undifferentiated mediocrity. Much of the blame is due to the ideology of Diversity, which exploits a nihilistic, anti-rational strain in our culture...

... if the advocates of Diversity had their way, there would be no rational mind, no God, no regularity, no tradition, no schools of thought. From the vantage point of Diversity, it is crucial that these obstacles be swept away. They cause the individual to focus on behavior, not on outcomes. His world is filled with restrictions, maxims, and standards. This means that he is free to make history....

It is ironic that Diversity, which could develop only in an environment imbued with reason, is contributing to its death. The ideologues believe they can redesign society, starting with its smallest detail. One failure after another, even the totalitarian upheavals of the twentieth century, have done nothing to dampen their zeal.

The pattern is all too familiar: A boisterous campaign to control social behavior -- "Diversity in the Workplace," for example -- as the fixers of social injustice squeeze the population into conformity with their perfectly designed rational panacea. But rationality itself cannot flourish and grow without a free and open interchange of ideas. By imposing what seems to be a rational solution, they create the conditions under which reason and intellect wither away....

I am not saying that certain aspects of equality cannot be desirable, but rather that they tend to be temporal in their usefulness. This becomes more apparent when we consider that equality involves trade-offs. The greater the equality, the greater the mediocrity, and the lesser the inventiveness.

Think about what multiculturalism preaches with all its high-minded rhetoric. Then WATCH WHAT IT BRINGS ABOUT in real life. That is the distinction between focusing simply on behavior --or rhetoric, or intent--versus the consequences or outcome of behavior.

It is in the tribal and entitlement behavior that you begin to see the toxicity of this dogma; as well as the essential oppressive nature of the politically correct dictums that the religion of multiculturalism demands of us.

Having given up any objective standard by which to mediate the vastly different perspectives and world views that each disparate group brings to the table; having encouraged the cannibal and looter cultures to imagine they are as worthwhile as the producer and creator cultures; having abandoned reason altogether in favor of expressing some feel-good platitudes about a supposedly essential "need to belong" to one's race, tribe, religion or group first and foremost; the outcome is what Stephen Hicks refers to as "group balkinization" --with all its inevitable and inescapable disunity, disharmony and conflict.

Why, in other words, would universal brotherhood--or even peaceful coexistence for that matter--result from a dogma that is antithetical to the concept of the universalism of human experience that is the bedrock of civilization; and instead glorifies cultural and tribal differences, no matter how insane or irrational, violent or destructive the cultural practices or beliefs that bring about those differences are?

Multiculturalism with its emphasis on Diversity teaches that what is truly important above all else is belonging to one's sexual, racial, ethnic, or religious identity, and not that one also belongs to the family of humankind. If the former is held superior, then "social withdrawal" from community and a pervasive distrust of other groups follows quite naturally.

The only "universal" that is shared under such circumstances is a committment to disharmony and, lurking beneath the overt moral relativism, is a grandiose sense of entitlement from each group as it jockeys for postion in the victimhood food chain.

So, many times in politics, programs that originate with the "best of intentions" end up doing exactly the opposite of what was intended. Yet, the political left is so ideologically committed to the utopian ideal of egalitarianism which, in the real world simply makes everyone equally poor and miserable (except for the lucky elites who control the social system) that they reflexly keep pouring money into programs that can be shown to actively harm the people they are meant to help; and reinforce the stereotypes they are meant to end.

The politically correct left heaps scorn on business, capitalism, free trade, and globalization; and instead glorify and praise the most primitive and barbaric of cultures and cultural practices. As Bob suggests, they come for the egalitarianism, but stay for the bestiality and tyranny they unleash with their "progressive" ways.

If they really cared about helping the poor; if they really cared about social "justice"--then they would shut the hell up and get out of the way of those evil, greedy capitalistic bastards, who, while pursuing their own selfish, profit-making agendas, in the long run effortlessly manage to increase the standard of living and improve the lives of everyone around them.

Multiculturalism, Diversity and Political Correctness are the holy trinity of the modern "progressive"; but in the real world those lovely leftist platitudes translate into cultural relativism, undifferentiated mediocrity and tyranny.